


Two at the End of the World

by gabolange



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-12
Updated: 2011-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee shares a drink with his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two at the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in December 2006. Set an indeterminate time after "Hero," with S3 speculation.

Lee sits in his father’s quarters, rolling a glass of ambrosia between his fingers. Even now, he smiles at the thought of drinking with his father. Lee is a married man, or was, and still he feels as if he is breaking some kind of rule, even when his father pours him a second. A drink, a failed marriage, another thing Lee shares with his father.

Once as a child, he had asked for a sip of his father’s ambrosia and had been obliged despite a shrill objection from his mother. “He’s got to decide for himself if he likes it,” had been then-Major Adama’s response as he handed the boy the snifter. Lee remembers the bitter taste, the burning, the hacking cough. He had turned to his father, after his mother had finished patting his back, and demanded, “You drink that stuff?”

Years later, he had supplied Zak’s parties with illicit booze—surely his mother knew, or his father understood—and it was only fun because it was illegal. Now when he relaxes with the his father, he thinks of the drinks they should have been having together. Three, not two, at the end of the world.

The old man sits heavily, pulling at the buttons on his uniform jacket. He undoes them methodically before reaching for the decanter. He pours deliberately, with a care Lee cannot quite understand. Ambrosia is not to be savored. That burning, that bitter taste is better forgotten for the rush. But the admiral swirls the liquid in his glass and takes a small sip. He puts the glass down gently, nodding at the taste or a hidden thought.

“How was your day?”

Lee shrugs. “Long.” He takes another sip of his drink and it’s almost gone. “Flew CAP.”

“You’re happy to be back on flight status,” his father says, and it is not a question, as if the admiral knows every answer every time. But this time it is true, and he can’t say exactly why it relieves him to be in his bird, in the air, flying formations with Kat or Hotdog or even Kara, even if he can’t think about Kara, even if he can’t listen to Dee’s voice over the comm.

“Yeah,” he says. “Good to be flying.”

His father nods, taking another small sip of his ambrosia. “I know the feeling,” he says and leans back into the couch.

Lee forgets that his father was a Viper pilot when it meant something other than twenty-hour shifts and hard drinking. Wants to forget that his father is still the bigger hero, now as then, because he has spent his whole life wanting to be just like the admiral, and now that he is, he hates himself just a little bit for it. “Had some trouble with my port thrusters,” Lee says, refusing to engage in a memory. It’s safer that way.

But his father knows what he’s doing, has seen the tactic before, and Lee can watch him turn that over in his mind, try to deal with the distant son. The distant son, now; once the most devoted, the least difficult. Best, now, because there’s no competition.

His old man chooses to ignore the comment, saying only, “Hmm,” before raising his glass to his lips.

And Lee doesn’t want to fall into the old traps, knows that’s what’s ruined his marriage, his relationship with Kara, his relationship with his father—and he wonders, at this moment, which of these is more important and refuses to decide.

“Stay for dinner?” his father asks, and Lee is glad to have dismissed the topic of his involvement or willingness to share. He opens his mouth to demur, wants to beg off because of fatigue or work, though the excuse wouldn’t be true despite the twenty hour shifts. He has nowhere else to be. His father continues, “The president’s going to be joining us.”

Lee’s eyes snap to his father’s face, notices the admiral closely contemplating his glass of ambrosia. It isn’t quite right, that refusal to look him in the eye. “Uh, sure, Dad,” he says, and he hates that he sounds like a teenager who capitulates to avoid trouble.

“A small family dinner,” his father says, so quietly. And now it is his father’s turn to roll the glass between his fingers, and Lee wonders briefly if he picked up that habit up from the old man. He must have.

But Lee’s mouth doesn’t wonder at learned mannerisms. It parrots back, “Family?” And he curses himself, because he’s learned that this isn’t an effective communication tool, it isn’t a—his thought process is broken when his father slowly raises his glance to look Lee in the eyes. The admiral smiles, and if Lee didn’t know him well, didn’t know him as only a son knows a father’s every move, every glance, because he knows his father as a little boy in love and in awe, Lee wouldn’t have caught the motion. But he does, because once he was a child who was offered a sip of ambrosia and his father wore the same smile then. It’s a smile that is knowing, satisfied, a little amused.

“Family,” Lee says, more firmly this time. And he wants to know everything right away, but not really, because this is still his father and in some regards Lee will always be a little boy. “I, uh.” He laughs a little, hears that his voice is forced. Takes a drink to feel the burning, hopes it will quiet the rush of blood in his ears.

His father waits for him to think, to understand, to comprehend that at some point the president became a friend and lover, and Lee can’t even think the words but he loves the woman as a mentor and a one-time co-conspirator and so perhaps he can understand that his father loves her, too. Can understand that his old man is here sharing a drink with his son, and it doesn’t break any rules.

“How long?” Lee stutters out, because he cannot yet voice approval, cannot, even with the memory of Dee’s face as she turned heel and walked out the door with angry words, understand that his father could love someone other than his mother. Doesn’t want to understand, even though that union ended over twenty years ago.

“Since New Caprica,” his father says.

Lee smiles, then. “Whole fleet figured it was long before that.” It’s safe, really, talk about work. He keeps going, brimming with questions he wants to ask, will probably never ask. “On Pegasus, they took bets.”

“Here, too.” That smile is back now, and Lee wonders just how much of the goings-on below decks his father is aware of. More than he thought. “We laughed about that.” And there is no question of who the we is, and Lee wants to know more about the context, tries to imagine the conversation. But in his mind, his father does not laugh about lower decks betting pools about his sex life. In his mind, the admiral scorns play.

“Who won?” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and Lee wants to swallow them, isn’t sure he wants the answer.

The old man grins outright at the question, though, and that is disarming on its own. “Seelix,” he answers. “But she has no idea.”

“No one had any idea,” Lee blurts. He should regret it, but can’t, because again his father hid his life away, shared it with someone other than his only living son.

The grin on his father’s face fades. “You gonna bitch at me because I didn’t tell you earlier?” he asks. And Lee can’t answer, knows he wouldn’t have wanted a morning after report, not ever, but especially not then, when his mind was in the wrong place and his body was suffering for it.

“Who else knows?” Lee asks, challenging.

“Tory Foster.”

Lee laughs. “I suppose she’d have to, right?” he says, and his voice is bitter and he wants to stop the sarcasm but can’t because it’s what he’s always done. “Can’t hardly frak the president without telling Tory first.” And it’s mean and cold and wrong but he’s said it and it sits there between them. It will be another sore point, another stumbling block.

But the admiral doesn’t respond, doesn’t yell, doesn’t throw Lee out of his quarters by his collar. Just sits there, and Lee wonders when he got old. “Sometimes it feels like that, yes,” his father says and looks at Lee again.

Silence hangs between them, and Lee can’t fill it, not after that statement. He reaches for the ambrosia and pours himself another, this time three fingers, and raises it to his lips. Lee knocks it back, and it is enough to send a jolt to his brain. “Dad?” he says, and it’s tentative, and he may be a little drunk now, for just a second. “That was too much information.”

The admiral shrugs, again a slight gesture, and for a man of such stature and personality he has such slight gestures. Lee wonders if this is why he is attracted to Kara, for she makes only large sweeping motions and the nuance is hidden in entirely different ways. He snorts into his drink at the thought.

“I need to be honest with you about this,” his father says.

His brain catches up to his mouth this time, and Lee does not say that it’s the first time, because that’s not true, and even if it was, and it almost is, it’s still generous. He looks to the bottle of ambrosia, does not pick it up. Wants to stare at his hands like he did as a child when he was caught making trouble, shamed into apology. There were no punishments in his house, only shame and guilt and imprecations to act adult. He pulls at a thumbnail, and he is not the CAG or a former commander of a battlestar or anything but a little boy sharing a drink with his dad. It could be the first time, and he wishes, not for the first time, that Zak could share this moment with him. Any moment.

And so he has to decide how he feels because he can see the clock on the side table inching closer to the hour, knows there will be a knock on the door, and that it will be awkward under the best of circumstances. He was twenty and rowdy and angry when he met his father’s second wife for the first time, and he made a terrible impression. His father must’ve excused him because Anne never mentioned it, always made a point of sending him a card on his birthday. She knew he was terrified.

He is terrified now, too, and this time he knows his father’s lover will forgive him any trespasses. He knows the president, or thinks he does. But this will have a different context entirely, and he hopes that when it is done, he will have the courage to go to Kara or Dee and tell them that his father and the president are happy together and to say that means that somewhere, there is hope for the future.

He takes a deep breath and says, “Family, huh.”

His father smiles now, and there is nothing subtle about it. “Family,” he says.


End file.
